RIYADH, 13 October 2004 — Three terror suspects were killed in Riyadh yesterday morning in a shootout with security forces in Al-Nahda district east of the city. Seven security forces men were injured.

A statement from the Ministry of Interior said that security forces had located a group of deviants in a building there. It said: “After the area was sealed off, the militants moved seven women and a child to the first floor of the building in order to deceive the security forces. The terrorists, using machine guns and hand grenades, opened fire on the security forces from the second floor of the building.”

Security forces then returned fire and the three terror suspects were killed.

A source told Arab News that one of the three terrorists blew himself up when he realized that security officers had cornered him. Arab News also learned that the head of the Special Forces Units, Mudeef Al-Talhi, was slightly injured in the gunbattle. Two of the seven injured police officers have been treated and discharged from hospital.

The three terrorists who were killed yesterday were not among the 26 on the Ministry of Interior’s list of most wanted men. Police confiscated two vehicles at the scene as well as ammunition, machine guns, hand grenades and documents.

Interior Minister Prince Naif, who visited the injured officers in hospital, said the morale of Saudi security forces battling Al-Qaeda militants was very high. “They feel proud of carrying out their national duty,” he said, adding that the Saudi leadership holds them in high esteem.

Two weeks ago another Riyadh neighborhood, Al-Shafa, was the scene of a gunbattle between militants and security forces when the militants failed to stop at a security checkpoint. The suspects shot at the security forces who returned fire and accidentally wounded a Pakistani taxi driver.

The militants then fled in another car which they stole at gunpoint from a passing Saudi motorist. Security forces said the three militants were wounded; the Saudi motorist said one was killed.

The shootout destroyed several shop fronts along Al-Shafa’s Tirmidi Street. Witnesses said the militants went into the nearby Al-Suwaidi area where house-to-house searches were carried out.

Less than 24 hours before the shootout in Al-Shafa, a Frenchman was shot dead in a quiet residential street in Jeddah. The incident marked the first terrorist attack on a Western national in Jeddah as well as the first on a French national in the Kingdom. Laurent Barbot, 45, was shot through the front window of his car as he drove back to Al-Zahra’s Sierra Village Compound from a nearby supermarket.

On Sept. 15, terrorists shot and killed British national, Edward Smith, 50, at “Max Discount Center” located on Makkah Road in Riyadh. Al-Qaeda later claimed responsibility for the killing in a statement on the Internet, saying it aims to strike fear into the hearts of infidels and drive all Westerners out of the Kingdom.

Last week, two people who had been Al-Qaeda members appeared on Saudi Arabian Television Channel 1 to confess their crimes. They said that 95 percent of Al-Qaeda members in Saudi Arabia were ignorant.

They also narrated how they took money from donation boxes in mosques and from donation boxes meant to pay for iftar meals for the poor in Ramadan.